Like the IRC chat of old, Discord comes with a set of slash commands that you can use to express yourself or do useful things like search for GIFs or read text aloud. Better yet, you can add bots to your Discord server to get even more functionality out of your server. Here are the most useful chat commands and bots for Discord. RELATED: How to Set Up Your Own Discord Chat Server...
Text messaging sucks. If you think about it, it’s a pretty inefficient way to communicate. It’s slow, lacks nuance, and it’s easy to make mistakes. Smartphones with huge touch screens have a lot going for them, but making texting easy isn’t one of them. Thankfully though, there are other options. Most major messaging apps—including iMessage, WhatsApp, and Facebook Chat—have other ways for you to communicate: you can send emoji, photos, videos, and—most importantly for me—voice messages, which have some serious advantages over pure text messages....
Mesh Wi-Fi systems offer solid Wi-Fi coverage throughout large areas that a single router can’t cover. But every manufacturer has its own mesh Wi-Fi system, and they can’t communicate with each other. That’s where the new “Wi-Fi EasyMesh” standard comes in. Don’t get too excited, though. No manufacturers have actually signed on to use this standard yet. Eero, Google, Linksys, Netgear, and D-Link all like their own proprietary systems....
Upgrading to a smart home used to be exclusively the realm of homeowners. If you couldn’t run cables, replace switch boxes, or install expensive wall units, you had to live with dumb lights. With newer smart home gadgets, however, you can upgrade parts of your apartment—even without your landlord’s approval in some cases. The world of smarthome gadgets is a complicated one for renters, because laws vary from state to state....
What Is the Google Home Mini? It also still comes with a touchpad on the top, allowing you to perform a handful of finger gestures to control music, volume, and other settings. However, instead of a flat, hard top, the Google Home Mini is covered in fabric, which makes it look a bit more homey. There doesn’t appear to be an audio out port like there is on Echo devices, but Google says that you can pass audio duties off to a Chromecast Audio-equipped speaker if you want better sound than what the Mini provides....
Wi-Fi cameras like the Nest Cam, Arlo Q, Canary, and more are super convenient—you just plug them into a nearby outlet, connect them to your Wi-Fi network, and you’re off to the races. However, that convenience comes at a cost. Wi-Fi cameras can be super useful, but whether you want them just to keep an eye on your pets while you’re gone or use them for serious home security, there are several things you should know before you dive head first into the world of Wi-Fi cameras....
If you have ever done much comparison shopping for a new CPU, you may have noticed that cores all seem to have the speed rather than a combination of different ones. Why is that? Today’s SuperUser Q&A post has the answer to a curious reader’s question. Today’s Question & Answer session comes to us courtesy of SuperUser—a subdivision of Stack Exchange, a community-driven grouping of Q&A web sites. The Question SuperUser reader Jamie wants to know why CPU cores all have the same speed instead of different ones:...
If you care about battery life on your iPhone, you may want to take a closer look at the XR. It has the best battery life of any iPhone before it, despite being the most affordable in the new lineup. So, how does it offer the best battery life compared to the other new devices? This is thanks to a couple of things. A Closer Look at the Battery Capacities Recent filings have exposed the battery capacity for each of the new iPhone models:...
It’s commonly suggested that Android has a “virus problem.” But, while there are viruses and malware on Android, it’s not really something you need to be concerned about—as long as you pay attention to what you’re doing. Android is Inherently Secure Android itself is a pretty secure operating system—a statement that has only gotten truer over the last few years. Right out of the box, all mainstream Android phones feature a locked bootloader to prevent access to the system partition....
The People Icon Without Any People The My People feature lives on Windows 10’s taskbar by default. Click it, and you can chat with people on a variety of different services. You can even pin your favorite contacts to the taskbar and have one-click access to your favorite people! That’s how it’s supposed to work. In reality, My People has integrated with very few services: In the default Windows installation, it only works with Mail and Skype....
I get attached to the apps I use. I do all my photo editing in Photoshop and Lightroom, I use Airmail for email, I listen to music with Spotify, I read feeds with Inoreader and Reeder, I Tweet using Tweetbot, and most importantly, for writing I use Ulysses. Ulysses has just announced they’re switching from a once-off payment model to an ongoing monthly subscription. Rather than pay $44.99 for the Mac app and $24....
This app is tracking your every move!—a hyperbolic headline I’m sure we’ve all seen before. While the sentiment here is a over-the-top, it does raise an important question: do you know how private your location actually is? Every day it’s something new. Today it’s headlines about activity-tracking app Strava (iOS, Android) and how it “gave away” locations of secret army bases. Despite my personal feelings on that particular story, it still raises an important question: do you know how private your location data is?...
The smart window coverings are made through a partnership with Eve and Coulisse. The main idea is being easy to get up and running and being future-proof. The motor is designed to charge with USB-C, so there’s no complicated writing required to get these up and running. You simply need to make sure the blinds are charged periodically. They support Apple HomeKit, so you will need to be part of the Apple ecosystem to take advantage of these smart blinds....
Samsung sells a few different true wireless earbuds already — the bean-shaped Galaxy Buds Live (my personal favorite), the high-end Galaxy Buds Pro with an in-ear design and active noise cancellation (ANC), and the cheaper Galaxy Buds 2. The new Buds 2 Pro will likely replace the original Buds Pro in that list. The main selling point here is the “superior Hi-Fi 24bit audio,” which Samsung claims is a significant boost to music quality while maintaining low latency over Bluetooth....
AMD has now confirmed that the “AMD Flaws” revealed by CTS-Labs are real. We recommend installing the BIOS update that fixes them when it’s available. But, don’t worry too much. The danger of these flaws has been exaggerated. Four separate vulnerabilities have been identified, and they are named Ryzenfall, Masterkey, Fallout, and Chimera. These flaws affect AMD Ryzen processors and EPYC server processors, which are both based on AMD’s Zen microarchitecture....
When you first plug your iPhone or iPad into a computer, you’ll be prompted to “trust” the computer on your device. This gives iTunes and other management tools on the computer the ability to access your photos, files, settings, contacts, and other data. Your iPhone or iPad remembers this decision and will automatically trust that computer in the future. If you change your mind later—maybe you trusted iTunes on a friend’s computer and want to revoke that computer’s access, or maybe you accidentally trusted something you shouldn’t have—there is a way to do so....
VirtualBox is a program that allows you to run multiple operating systems (guests) on one computer (the host computer). You may need to transfer files between the host and the guest. It’s easy to set up in Windows guests, but tricky in Ubuntu guests. RELATED: Install Guest Additions to Windows and Linux VMs in VirtualBox We’ll show you how to set up an Ubuntu guest machine so you can access folders on the host machine from within the guest machine....
Chrome and Edge both offer a guest mode that keeps your browsing isolated from your main profiles. If you access guest mode too frequently, you can add its shortcut to your Windows desktop. This makes opening guest mode even easier. What Is Guest Mode in Chrome and Edge? Guest mode in Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge is basically a guest profile for your browsing sessions. When you use guest mode, the browser doesn’t load your main browser profiles (the ones that have your browsing history, browser personalizations, and so on)....
Firefox Quantum is here, and it’s chock full of improvements, including the new Photon UI. Photon replaces the “Australis” interface that’s been used since 2014, and features a ton of customization options. Which is good, because there are a few annoyances—like all that empty space on either side of the URL bar. Quickly Remove Items from the Toolbar (Including Those Blank Spaces) Let’s start with the simplest option: removing items you don’t like from the toolbar....
Using Spotlight Search from the Home screen on your iPhone and iPad can be handy. By default, the search screen may display some app suggestions powered by Siri. Here’s how to turn those suggestions off. Here’s an example of the kind of Siri Suggestions that pop up while searching from the Home Screen on an iPhone or iPad. You’ll see suggested apps listed just below the search bar and also possible actions like opening certain Photo albums or sending messages to certain people....
